Creativity

I thought of how to improve the subtitle, from The definitive guide to understanding and solving all (yes, all) our environmental problems to The definitive guide to understanding and solving all (yes, all) our environmental symptoms The problem is our behavior, which results from our culture. What we see in the environment is just the physical manifestation of our culture. I've shared the idea with a few friends and they like the new way too. But we can't change it now. It's one of the challenges of authorship. For the rest of your life you can think of ways you could improve it. C'est la vie.

The MTA Arts & Design department released a book Contemporary Art Underground, about art they install. I felt honored that they invited me to the launch the other evening, especially because they gave name tags to everyone and specified "Artist" for those of us who created art for their program. They didn't make the designation big and showy, though during the talk, they asked all the artists to raise their hands. I may have been looking for what I wanted, but I sensed that we who raised our hands felt honored and appreciated. Here's my name tag: Sorry it got ripped before I took the picture. Here's the invitation: I wouldn't call the event huge, but I'd guess a couple hundred people came and top…

Sunday was the first sunny and warm day of the year, reaching nearly 70 degrees (21C). That's unseasonably warm for the beginning of March, but only compared to the past. Compared to future Marches, it's cool. I spent the morning on the roof, charging the battery. I knew I wanted to head to the park, but feared what I knew I'd see: piles of garbage. People don't just go to the park. They don't prepare food for a picnic there. They don't go and wait to eat until mealtime. They stop at a restaurant or convenience store along the way and bring prepackaged or takeout food or doof with disposable utensils, disposable bags, disposable napkins, and other disposable stuff. Still, I braved it and went…

About a year ago I started writing the first draft of my next book. If you count earlier iterations that only led to refining the outline and restarting, I probably started six months earlier, not that I kept track. I had finished my first draft a few months later, spring 2021. I knew when I started writing my second non-self-published book, Initiative, that I would write my next book on sustainability. I had just started This Sustainable Life, called Leadership and the Environment at the time, and anticipated podcasting would help develop it. It did. The new book will be much stronger for it. This time I worked with an editor far more experienced than before. At first, I reeled from the amount of editing…

I've never cared much one way or the other about kombucha. I've tasted it once or twice, but it comes packaged, so I avoid it. I've been making vinegar for a while from apples and water, sometimes adding sugar, since I have some a neighbor left when he moved. The vinegar tastes delicious and has resulted in a bunch of the yeast and bacteria cultures that grow as I pass them from one batch to the next. I figured kombucha and vinegar were similar, just kombucha had tea. I don't drink much tea. In fact, I have two containers of tea leaves at least ten years old in my cupboard for guests, but I rarely make any. Finally, it hit me; if I take over…